My Battle Against Industrialized Infanticide

by Pastor Andrew Isker

On Tuesday, January 10, I testified to the Minnesota Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which was holding a hearing on SF 1, the very first piece of legislation from the new DFL Senate majority in Minnesota. For years, the Minnesota Senate was controlled by a Republican Majority thanks to the greater degree of representation the Minnesota Constitution affords rural and exurban counties. But thanks to the Minnesota GOP’s corruption and ineptitude (even exceeding their fellows at the Federal level), especially in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, the DFL was able to easily lie their way to control of the entire Minnesota legislature.

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It is not a coincidence that the very first piece of legislation, in both houses, is a bill that codifies a right to kill a pre-born baby right up to the point of birth and without any restriction on minors pursuing prenatal infanticide without the knowledge or consent of their parents; the bill is a blank check for infant murder of every possible kind. The bill is so monstrous it even codifies a “right” for minor children to sterilize themselves at any age without parental notification or consent. The people putting forth and supporting this legislation are monsters. As I listened to Senator Jen McEwen (DFL) read her nauseating bill, I was not in the sterile confines of a recently renovated Minnesota Senate Office Building; I was at the foot of an Aztec temple, adorned with thousands of tiny skulls and floors slick with blood.

First, the bill’s sponsor was allowed to bring forward witnesses to support her legislation. The first appeared with her child and baby, all wearing masks. She told the committee how she would not be able to be a mother today if she had not had her first child executed in the womb to preserve her uterine function. Disabled people don’t deserve to exist, you see. The next witness was an experienced abortionist, responsible for more death than any serial killer in the state, with the possible exception of our recently re-elected Governor, Tim Walz, who infamously locked infected people in with the elderly in nursing homes. Walz’s newly installed health commissioner, the replacement for brains behind the Covid-nursing home plot, was the final witness; her testimony was a boring recitation of pro-infanticide platitudes with some DEI shibboleths thrown in for good measure. Everyone needed to know that if you oppose the murder of babies in the womb, you are a racist, homophobic, and misogynist.

Next came testimony from the public via Zoom, most of which was in opposition to the bill. You could tell when someone on Zoom was going to support the child murder bill because they all had their pronouns in their display name. The most noteworthy thing in this portion was the testimony from the various “Reproductive Rights/LGBTQ+/Antiracism/SorosBucks” NGO representatives. Every single one of them read from a script on their screen without even bothering to make it sound like they weren’t reading from a script. It has the same energy as when a teacher calls on the least enthusiastic student to read in front of the class. These people knew with a 6-3 majority on this committee, nothing they said mattered, they had already won, and this was their pathetic and soporific victory lap.

Next came the in-person public testimony, which was mostly in opposition to the bill. There were many pro-life groups and perspectives represented, most of which were explicitly Christian. My turn to testify came. As a pastor who preaches for the better part of an hour and leads a 90-minute worship service every week, I was not nervous about speaking publicly. But I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. The State Senators were not intimidating, but the heaviness of the question at hand—whether countless children would be slaughtered at an industrial scale in our state (especially since many neighboring states have enacted near-total bans)—overwhelmed me. When I prepared my short remarks (we were allotted only two minutes), I knew I could not waste the few seconds I was given trying to persuade those with frozen, adamantine hearts. Were I Cicero himself, no argument of mine could even make a dent. No, my calling as a herald of the victory of Jesus Christ gave me a duty to speak prophetically to the wicked rulers of my state.

My only thought was, “if the Lord Jesus were bodily present before this committee, what would He say in the two minutes they give Him? I declared to that committee that their authority is not absolute and is granted to them by God and that Christ is their King. Next, I did not mince words, and I pronounced woe upon those who would use that authority to defend the murderers of children. I read the first seven verses of Psalm 94, an imprecatory psalm that asks the God of Vengeance to shine forth and not allow the murderers of the fatherless to triumph. Finally, I announced to them the certainty of the wrath that was in store for them and our state if they continued the practice of infanticide. I pleaded with them to throw themselves upon the mercy of Jesus Christ, repent, and vote “no” on this bill. Finally, I asked God to have mercy upon them and our state; Amen. Despite the chair repeatedly warning the gallery not to react to testimony, my closing “Amen” elicited an involuntary response from more than half of the gallery and at least one GOP Senator.

The young man who testified right after me, seated immediately to my right, represented some Lutheran NGO (not grandmas at potlucks and bearded, beer-drinking Lutherans, but churches and lesbian pastrixes adorned with the rainbow flag Lutheran). During this green-haired young man’s testimony, he made sure to tell everyone that God loves abortion and that only the evil Christian nationalists “inside and outside of this room” want to stop them. I don’t know if the camera caught my smirk at that line, but if it did, you could tell I was thinking, “buddy, that slur doesn’t work on me. I co-wrote the book in support of Christian Nationalism!”

Most of the rest of the in-person public testimony was from various pro-life organizations and activists, much of it emotionally stirring, especially the women describing the grief, guilt, shame, and pain from killing their babies. I could not help but notice the contrast between these women, who were given the hard grace of conviction for their sin (and the forgiveness for it paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ), and the hard hearts of the female DFL Senators, their staffers, and the pro-infanticide activists who were positively gleeful about killing tiny human beings.

What I will remember from this experience most is that apart from the Catholic bishop who read a statement from the Minnesota Conference of Catholic Bishops via Zoom, I was the only clergyman out of thousands in the state of Minnesota to testify against this monstrous bill. There are many ostensibly conservative, evangelical churches with tens of thousands of congregants in the wealthiest suburbs of the Twin Cities, all of which are within a 30-minute drive of the state capitol. Where were their pastors? I do not say this to trumpet my own virtue or righteousness. There is nothing remarkable about me. But where were all the other men of God?

Of course, if you are familiar with the lasting influence of Charles Finney and Second Great Awakening revivalism on conservative evangelicalism you know why this is. The fundamental rule of ministry in the evangelical world is that whatever you do, you must never harm the marketability of your church—the gospel is at stake! Why, if you were not able to effectively trick unbelievers into liking you, how would you ever emotionally manipulate them into believing in Jesus!? How would we ever get the suburbanite women who voted for these DFL succubi to come to our churches if we proclaimed the certainty of God’s wrath for their abominations!? That’s not very gospel-centered-y of you!

But the time has long past come for us to reject such cynical pragmatism and proclaim the truth no matter the cost. We have reached a point where the lovers of death are fully aware they are killing human persons—at this hearing, the phrase “bodily autonomy” was repeated ad nauseum, with some pro-aborts even saying that no person’s rights, even a little baby’s, have any command over their bodies. Even forgetting the hypocrisy of such people over the Covid vaccine, lockdowns, and masks, to make such a claim is absolutely monstrous. They know that asserting this right means the flimsy moral distinction between born and unborn will not hold up, and they are arguing for legalizing child neglect and abandonment. “How dare you keep me from leaving my toddler in a dumpster! Caring for him was impeding my ability to pursue orgasms!” These were the kinds of insidious arguments these testifiers made. They know exactly what they are doing. The time has come for Christian leaders who claim to actually believe the Bible to understand that either we preach clearly and powerfully against them or we are giving tacit approval to what they believe and do by our silence.

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